In a small village in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, 73-year-old farmer turned writer Mickey McGuigan is our guide into the still-beating heart of pagan Ireland. We discover that, although often hidden beneath a veneer of Catholic (or sometimes Protestant) religiosity, the old folk wisdom has never gone away. As Mickey introduces us to the proponents of various “cures”— from the man who can cure ringworm in cattle with spit, to a woman who treats colicky babies by unknotting a piece of string—we see the balance between desperation and hope in the lives of a people attached to an ancient way of life even when it no longer has much to offer them. James McNally